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Geoffw in TAC2015: RU, HE and Friends | ||
Tags: Football/Soccer | Yiddish | Hebrew | Dutch | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Russian | German | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 225 of 251 25 November 2014 at 1:13am | IP Logged |
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Recently ran into someone from Austria and had no trouble striking up a conversation in German at a loud party. It
didn't hurt that I had been reading a German novel at home that evening before leaving, but I felt fine...except that I couldn't remember how to say "trust" as a verb, for some strange reason. It only popped into my head two days later. Weird. I'm now 200 pages into Harry Potter in Hebrew, but I've slowed recently. Overall comprehension has been surprisingly high and I always know what's going on, but still much weaker than my strong languages due to vocabulary holes. What distracted me was trying to get through Harry Potter 7 in French, and I've done about a third so far. With the pop-up kindle dictionary, I can learn/reinforce a couple words a page without slowing down significantly, and generally speaking I'm just reading for fun now and not struggling most of the time. But I think French novels tend to be too complicated still--perhaps French writers like to show off their vocabulary? Or maybe I've just happened to pick some high degree of difficulty books thus far? By comparison, I can attest to some serious gradients between levels of difficulty in my German books. Das Cusanus Spiel, while perfectly doable for me, requires some serious concentration to read, and sometimes a dictionary. There are a lot of unknown words, even if they don't usually interfere with comprehension. This is some meaty time-travel alternate-universe-theory Sci-fi, and gets really bizarre in the middle. Die Zweite Legion (Gehemnis von Askir 2), on the other hand, is more conventional, easily-digestible fantasy adventure. It's been described by one reviewer as being more like a role-playing game story than a conventional fantasy story, and I can see why. I'm learning words from this book too, but my comprehension is high by comparison, near total, I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 226 of 251 14 December 2014 at 4:20pm | IP Logged |
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In the Russian TAC team thread we just got the annual end-of-year-summary reminder, so I guess I'll get started.
I've often been hesitant to sum up year X before 1/1/(X+1), but I'll try to be a little less uptight this year... My summary post(s) will try to cover my target languages as follows: Germanic (German, Dutch, Yiddish), Romance (French, Italian), and everything else (Russian, Hebrew). Germanic -------- German: Considering that I have at least 6-7 "official" target languages, I'm very pleased with how German went this year. No, I didn't yet meet all of my written goals (such as reading Der Steppenwolf and Das Cusanus Spiel), but the year isn't over yet. I did, however, go through a couple audiobooks and a couple fantasy novels, and I picked up a decent amount of vocabulary. I continued to (semi-)regularly attend a Skype conversation group (my only language for which I can say so), and this has at least let me maintain my speaking level, and I think it's improved slightly. I at least feel significantly more comfortable speaking than a year ago. On multiple occasions (yesterday, for example) I've run into German speakers and had no reservations about diving right into German conversation about whatever topic is at hand. My comprehension remains occasionally spotty with colloquial or informal spoken language, but generally is excellent for either slower-paced or more formal speech, as well as most written forms. The best indicator of my comfort level may be that, when I was processing documents for a real estate transaction on my home computer and the new-to-me software defaulted to German, I was sufficiently confident and comfortable to actually perform the transaction without resetting my computer's language settings. Dutch: I joined the Dutch TAC team because I wasn't sure what else would encourage me to make time for Dutch this year. It didn't work. I did very little. I can still understand pretty well and maybe produce spoken or written Dutch if I need to, but I'm starting to get rusty. Yiddish: I didn't try to work on Yiddish this year, but I do receive regular news stories in Yiddish, so I read them from time to time and it keeps me fresh(ish). I found a contact recently who speaks Yiddish at home with his children, and he has twice encouraged me to reach out to him to speak Yiddish. I suppose I should get around to that sooner or later... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 227 of 251 14 December 2014 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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Romance
-------- French: This has become for me a language of some moderate utility, but one that I am also only moderately enthusiastic to pursue. I estimate that I've read at least 1200-1500 pages of novels in French this year (mainly Harry Potter, but not exclusively), and I've listened to a ton of RFI broadcasts. I haven't been able to track my totals very well so I more or less gave up on logging my results for Super Challenge purposes. I have had very limited opportunities or reasons to use spoken French, and my writing has been limited to my occasional log entry here. Listening comprehension remains a huge challenge, despite my great progress. While I have learned to distinguish the subtle sounds of spoken French, I remain convinced that the signal-to-noise ratio is inherently lower in spoken French than in my other target languages. It by no means seems an impossible task, but it remains frustratingly difficult at times. Clear and slow formal French generally poses only minimal problems, but I still need a processor upgrade in my brain to handle the higher bandwidth signal when the speed increases. Italian: My efforts with Italian were more limited than French. I did some reading and some listening, but to a smaller order of magnitude. I did start reading my first Italian book that was not a translation of a work I'd previously read (Imperium). It was interesting and generally not hard to follow, but I just got sidetracked by too many more compelling things in other languages. My main reasons for wanting to improve are for future trip(s) to Italy, which are at least a couple years in the future at best, and watching football -- if I ever get my Italian channel back. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 228 of 251 14 December 2014 at 4:47pm | IP Logged |
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Hebrew: I still have not started trying to make any regular progress in Assimil Hebrew (or any other course). I did
continue to have regular exposure to Hebrew through sources including rabbinic literature and audio lectures regarding same. These have some meaningful carryover to the modern language, but it is not exact. I really only took up Modern Hebrew in earnest relatively recently when I started plowing through Harry Potter. As this has no vowel points (except to clarify ambiguities, e.g., for proper names), I was long too intimidated to try, and thought it would be impossible. It is still the case that I may be making numerous vocalization errors when I read. However, I have had a surprising amount of success. I'm past page 200 now, and I can always follow what's going on. In many cases, I find I know every word in a paragraph, but in other cases they will be entirely opaque. I also watched essentially all of the Israeli TV series Srugim, which I found incredibly engaging. My audio comprehension improved quite a bit. Verdict--I have a long way to go to be comfortable in the modern language, but my many years of experience with the biblical and rabbinic versions have given me a very solid foundation that makes progress possible. I have finally turned a corner, where extensive reading is both possible and profitable. At this point, it just seems like I need to put in the work and I can tell that I'll keep improving. For a long time, I didn't know how I would ever get off the ground, so this is a significant milestone for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 229 of 251 14 December 2014 at 5:00pm | IP Logged |
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Russian: The first half of the year was great for Russian, but I dropped it, as often happens, and only recently
picked back up. I tried for a while to build an Anki deck from Harry Potter vocabulary, but I only ended up confirming that flash cards are anathema to me. I got through lesson 60 of Assimil, but then I stopped being able to find time for it every day. I would like to pick that up again and get over the finish line, at least of the passive wave. The lessons were not terribly difficult (after having spent some time doing extensive reading with HP), so I should be able to do this if I make an effort. I'm currently not quite to page 500 in Гарри Поттер и Орден Феникса. Had I stuck with it all year, I would be done by now, but this is still a 1.5 page per day rate, I suppose, which isn't to bad considering everything else I'm up to. I also did a decent number of hours of L/R with this book and also with Кубок Огня, and also with a Russian translation of the Bible. I'm still not comfortable with Russian texts without a crutch, such as knowing the underlying story. The vocabulary remains too opaque, due to the reduced rate of cognates compared to my Germanic and Romance TLs. But extensive and intensive reading combined have been rather effective in helping me to slowly acquire this vocabulary. I have made great progress since the beginning of the year. While much of Harry Potter still seems very cloudy, I can mostly follow the story, and off and on the text becomes very clear to me. I earlier said that "this is the year" that I learn Russian. I probably thought I would get farther than I did, but my results are a huge step in the right direction. One more step of this size and I'll be grasping the bottom rung of the "independent learner" ladder (~the B-level of CEFR for comprehension where it becomes possible to improve through real-life types of usage). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 230 of 251 14 December 2014 at 7:45pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Geoff,
I have microtagged your detailed report about your language activities in 2014 for you, which was very interesting for me to read. You are very motivated and active with all kinds of language studies and usage despite the fact that you have a busy professional and family life. That's impressive and inspirational! Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 14 December 2014 at 7:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| plumbem! Groupie United States Joined 3634 days ago 44 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French | Message 231 of 251 19 December 2014 at 3:21pm | IP Logged |
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Hey, thanks for the post in my log! I have taken a brief look at yours here and am super impressed! I am curious how the knowledge/learning of Dutch and German intersect or what difficulties they present. It won't be a few years I think before I set out to learn German, and certaintly after my Dutch is cemented down a little better.
The other texts I have used for both my Dutch and French, although its not really a fair comparison to the HP books is Tintin and Asterix & Obelix, but boy is the French Asterix another kettle of fish. They have enough diversity that they don't get old too quick, and I would be happy to read them in a future language. Captain Haddock's drawings in particular are enough to make me enjoy myself without any words needed. Its also great seeing how translators set out to tackle his foul mouth. Just as interesting is how one goes about translating the names of characters in Asterix. I should take to reading LOTR or some K. Leguin, enjoyed those as a teen. Its funny though because part of the reason I imagine myself learning a language is for an interest in a specific culture and literature. And yet there are these repeated crutches that are damn useful. Inadvertently I might end up having HP down by heart and having some useful things to say about the translation of best-sellers to suit cultural and linguistic needs across markets! I am not really sure when one arrives at this place of being really capable of meaningfully reading classic works and probably I should just go for it sooner. Holding this idea a month ago, I cracked open Les Mis on my kindle. What's so great is that, for me, its sometimes hard to tell how long an ebook actually is. Really crawling through the first thirty pages or so, I looked up the page count on google and there it is on a list with Temps Perdu as one of the longest French novels ever written.LOL. I switched to 3 Musketeers the next day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 232 of 251 19 December 2014 at 3:51pm | IP Logged |
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For learning French, check out
emk's old log if you haven't already. And if you weren't aware, check out izneo.com for BDs online. Last I checked, the first issue of Blake and Mortimer is still free (search by price = gratuit). What you say about reading translations vs. natively authored materials is part of why I let Dutch drop this past year. It takes a lot of effort to track down recent literature that isn't a translation into Dutch. Dutch was a bit of a gateway drug for me to real language learning, though I'd always been obsessed with languages without having any real success. My "method" was as follows. I flew through "Dutch in 30 Days" in about a week. Then I ordered a used copy of Prisoner of Azkaban in Dutch. While waiting for it to arrive, I read the Dutch language Wikipedia page for Prisoner of Azkaban, copying and pasting whole paragraphs into Google Translate to make an impromptu parallel text. By the time the book arrived, I was ready to stumble through the book itself with some difficulty (not knowing everything but continuing to read anyways). By the time I finished the book, I was understanding most of what I read. That was a very quick, easy and informal process for me to get up to basic reading ability. It was only possible due to my preexisting knowledge of both English and German, naturally. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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